Inception's happy ending looks disturbing when you think about what happened to Fischer

When you stop and think about what Cobb and his team accomplished in the first Inception film, it's disturbing. The happy ending belongs to Cobb, but the man whose mind they broke into is left believing a lie, and I think that opens the door to a very different kind of sequel.

What Cobb's team did to Fischer is disturbing

We spend the entire movie rooting for Cobb and his team. We want them to pull off the heist, escape limbo, and get Cobb home to his children. But think about what they're doing to Fischer.

They exploit his complicated relationship with his dying father. They manufacture an intensely personal emotional experience. And they convince him that breaking up his father's business empire is his own idea.

The most disturbing part is that Fischer has absolutely no idea any of this happened. He gets off the plane believing he's had a profound emotional breakthrough with his father. The entire experience was engineered by a group of corporate mercenaries hired by his father's biggest competitor. We get a happy ending for Cobb, but what happened to Fischer?

An Inception sequel could follow the victim instead of the extractors

Now imagine a sequel that explores this from the opposite perspective. Instead of following a team of extractors trying to plant an idea, we follow someone who begins to suspect that an idea has been planted inside their own head.

Think about how horrifying that would be. How do you prove somebody has manipulated your subconscious when you can't even trust your own memories? And how do you know which of your thoughts are yours?

Suddenly, you've got a psychological thriller about someone questioning everything they believe. They'd be desperately trying to uncover who manipulated them and why, without knowing whether they can even trust their own mind.

The same dream technology could carry a completely different movie

The beauty of it is that you're exploring the exact same technology from an entirely different perspective. In the first film, we're the ones breaking into somebody's subconscious. In a sequel, we'd be the victim trying to figure out who broke into ours.

That is a completely different movie. It shows how much potential there is in this concept without having to bring back Cobb, recreate the original heist, or undermine its ending.